Day 3 : Mounting Montana
This was to be our longest and most beautiful day. So in preperation we took advantage of the time change and slept in an hour. By the time we had awoke the senior citizens that were lined up pumping their children's inheritence into slot machines the previous night had already dispersed and around 9:00 so did we. | ||
It's like some motel room piece of art. | ||
It didn’t take long for us to reach Wyoming and not too long after that before the first snow covered mountains, the Grand Tetons, came in view. We decided not to take the scenic bypass, which they made a point to list as the “safest”, thinking if they felt it necessary to point that out the van didn’t have a chance. We saw a countless number of deer this day along with countless mountains and hills that in comparison to Missouri’s hills were mountains. The rpm’s of the van would jump and the engine hum as it strained to reach the peak of each hill. I turned off the air conditioner as we had noticed before that this helped decrease the engines effort. After each peak was reached a new problem would arise as we would then plummet down 6% grade slopes for miles at a time. This would not have been such a problem had the interstates of Montana been anything like the straight interstates I’m used to. These roads curved along the sides of mountains sometimes drastically requiring you to decrease from the posted 75 mile speed limit to 35 mph less yee be thrown from the side of the mountain. | ||
That blurry thing on the left is the van teetering on the edge of Montana. | ||
We survived the treacherous roads surrounding Yellowstone and pushed past our intended destination opting for a shorter drive from Missoula for our last day. By the time we had reached Missoula my legs were experiencing pain filled joints and in comparison blissfully numb muscles from sitting for so long. I just wanted to lay down. And eat. Yeeeah, lay down and eat, but the exit took us to a street that was not the street with the blue sign advertised motel. Instead there was another street with a sign saying the street we wanted was two blocks, but neglected to mention in which direction. We chose the opposite direction. Many dead ends and one way streats later we turned onto the street we wanted and found the motel. This, the cheapest motel of our trip, had working free wireless internet and menus from every place that would deliver. | ||
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